3"w.?A^0/YV, Qc 



eov^^ 



f 



w 






^^ ^-^ 




Class ^_k641 
BookJjJ 



r 

REGENERATION BEFORE RECONSTRUCTION. 






SPEECH 



&P 



HOM GEOEGE iTJtJLrAN 



IN THE HfUSE OF K E P R E S E N T A T I V E S, 



JANUARY as, 1867. 



:>' \- ♦ 



WASHINGTON: 

PRINTED AT THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE OFFICE. 

1867. 






• / 



^•■! It* %■ ■■ 

■ ■■':■ '^"' 

West. Eee. Hls|. Boo. 



• ^ 



REGENEKATION BEFORE RECONSTRUCTION. 



The House having under consideration House bill 
No. 543, to restore to the States lately in rebellion 
their political rights, and the amendment thereto 
proposed by Mr. Stetkns— 

Mr. JULIAN said: _ 

Mr. Spkaker : In view of the time already 
consumed in the discussion of the measure now 
before us, and tlie general desire of members 
to reach an early vote on the pending motion 
to commit, I shall endeavor to address the 
House as briefly as possible ; and I therefore 
prefer, on this occasion, to submit my views 
without interruption. I -cannot support the 
amendment proposed by the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] in its present 
form ; but I shall not vote to send it to the 
Committee on Reconstruction at this late hour 
in the session. I believe the time has come 
for action, and that having this great subject 
now before us we should proceed earnestly, 
and with as little delay as may be, to mature 
some measure which may meet the demand 
of the people. Nearly two years have elapsed 
since the close of the war, during the whole 
of wliwch time the regions blasted by treason 
have been subject to the authority of Congress ; 
and yet these regions are still unprovided with 
any valid civil governments, and no loyal man 
within their limits, black or white, is safe in 
his person or estate. The civil rights act and 
the Freedmen's Bureau bill are set at open 
defiance, while freedom of speech and of the 
press are unknown. The loyal people of these 
districts, with sorely-tried patience and hopes 
long deferred, plead with us for our speedy 
interposition in their' behalf; and even the 
conquered rebels themselves, who are supreme 
in this general reign of terror, seem to be 
growing weary of their term of lawlessness and 
misrule. Sir, let us tolerate no further pro- 
crastination ; and while we justly hold the 
President responsible for the trouble and mal- 
administration which now curse the South and 
disturb the peace of the country, let us remem- 
ber that the national odium already perpetually 
linked with the name of Andrew Johnson will 



be shared by ug, if we fail in the great duty 
which is now brought to our doors. 

Mr. Speaker, my first objection to the amend- 
ment proposed is that it practically confounds 
tlie distinction between treason and loyalty by 
allowing the electWe franchise to the great body 
of the criminals who strove, through four bloody 
years, to destroy the nation's life. No such 
policy can have my sanction. The sixth sec- 
tion of the amendment, which seeks to guard 
against this by the affidavit which it requires, 
would prove a delusion and a snare. I will 
read the form of the oath which it prescribes : 

I, A B, do solemnly swear, on the Holy Evangel- 
ists of Almighty God, that on the 4th day of March, 
1864. and at all times thereafter, I would willingly 
have complied with the requirements of the procla- 
mation of the President of the United States, issued 
on the 8th day of December, 1863, had a safe oppor- 
tunity of so doing been allowed me ; that on the said 
4th of March, 1864, and at all times thereafter, I was 
opposed to the continuance of the rebellion and to 
the establishment of the so-called confederate gov- 
ernment, and voluntarily gave no aid or encourage- 
ment thereto, but earnestly desired the success of the 
Union, and the suppression of all armed resistance 
to the Government of the United States; and that I 
will henceforth faithfully support the Constitution 
of the United Statesand the Union of the States there- 
under. 

Sir, of what value would be such an oath ? 
In exacting it, instead of protecting the rights 
of loyal men we should build a safe bridge over 
which every rebel in the South could pass back 
into power. How could perjury be assigned 
npon such an affidavit? By what process could 
the prosecutor prove, on the trial, the hidden 
purpose or the secret intention of the party? 
I have little faith in the oaths of rebels under 
any circumstances. If our experience in the 
late war establishes any general rule in such 
cases, it is that the oath of a traitor proves 
nothing but the perjury of the villain who takes 
it. Most assuredly we could not rely upon it 
where the man who swears runs no risk of 
being brought to account ; and the exaction of 
such an oath of men who have ruthlessly lifted 
their hands against their country is scarcely 
less than a mockery. 

But if it be granted that tJiis oatii would be 



honestly taken, it does not follow that jve should 
now restore the franchise on any such cheap 
and easy conditions. Are we willing thus to 
degrade and belittle this great right, the highest 
expression of citizenship, and its truest safe- 
guard ? Must we make haste to share the gov- 
erning power of the country with the rebel 
hordes who fought us nearly three years, be- 
cause they grew weary of their enterprise on 
the 4th day of March, 1864, and desired then 
to give it up? Is treason against the nation 
an offense so slight, an aJTair so trifling, that 
no real atonement for it shall be demanded? 
Sir, these are grave questions, and the state 
of our country to-day demands that Congress 
shall ponder them. The citizen's duty of 
allegiance and the nation's obligation of pro- 
tection are reciprocal. The one is the price 
of the other, and the compact is alike binding 
upon both parties. When the rebels broke 
this compact by attempting the crime of na- 
tional murder their right of citizenship was 
forfeited, and the nation has the undoubted 
right to declare the consequences of that for- 
feiture by law. It not only has the right, but 
in my judgment is sacredly iound to exercise 
it. And why? Because,* the language of 
Vattel, " Every nation is obliged to perform 
the duty of self-preservation." The only solid 
foundation of national security is the allegiance 
of the citizen ; and the mostsolemn duty which 
is at this moment devolved upon the Congress 
of the United States is the duty of keeping 
the Government of the country in the hands of 
loyal men. No Government can be secure, 
and no Government deserves to live, which 
allows its enemies a common and equal voice 
with its friends in the exercise of its powers. 
This nation has hitherto recognized this prin- 
ciple. In the very first years of the Republic 
Congress sanctioned the perpetual disfranchise- 
ment of the leader and principal officers of 
Shay's rebellion ; and the acts of Congress 
which warrant the exercise of this power of 
disfranchisement stand in full force and un- 
challenged on your statute-books. Congress, 
during the rebellion, deprived of all rights of 
citizenship those who deserted from the mili- 
tary or naval service, or who, after being "duly 
enrolled," left the United States or their mili- 
tary districts to avoid a draft. Certainly these 
offenses are no greater than the crime of treason, 
persisted in for successive years. The authority 
of Congress in all such cases rests upon the 
universal law of nations. It grows out of the 
contract of allegiance and the duty of every 
nation to preserve its own life ; and therefore 
no trial and conviction by any judicial tribunal 
are necessary as a condition of the declared 
forfeiture. The forfeiture is not declared as 
a punishment for the violation of any criminal 
law, but as a safeguard against national danger. 
It is an expression of the same policy which 
excludes aliens from the rights of citizens. 
The power is not unconstitutional, for our 
fathers, in framing the Constitution, recognized 
the law of nations, aa they were compelled to 



do, in launching the Republic among the in- 
dependent Powers of the world. Nor is it at 
all affected by the question whether the dis- 
tricts lately in revolt are States in the Union 
or territorial provinces. In both States and 
Territories the national authority must be held 
paramount as to the rights of citizenship, which 
has uniformly been regarded as a national 
question. If the second section of the first 
article of the Constitution gives to the vStates 
the power to say who shall vote, this must 
necessarily be understood to apply only to 
those who are citizens of the United States, 
since otherwise the national authority might 
be overthrown by aliens in our midst in 
combination with citizens. The late war for 
the Union has been carried on at immense 
cost for the purpose of demonstrating to all 
the world that we are a nation; and every 
nation, according to the high authority already 
quoted, " has a right to every thing that can 
ward off imminent danger, and keep at a dis- 
tance whatever is capable of causing its ruin; 
and from that very same reason that estab- 
lishes its right it has also the right to the 
things necessary to its preservation." 

Mr. Speaker, with what face can we denounce 
the President for his wholesale pardons, and 
charge him with making treason honorable and 
loyalty odious, if we ourselves voluntarily clothe 
with the honor and dignity of the ballot the men 
who have forfeited all their rights by their 
crimes against their country? With what con- 
sistency can we declaim against the monstrous 
blood-guiltiness of treason while we extend to 
the traitor the right hand of political fellow- 
ship? Sir, not a single rebel has yet expiated 
his crime on the gallows. Not one has even 
been tried. Neither confiscation nor exile has 
been the portion of the armed assassins and 
outlaws who summoned to their untimely graves 
more than three hundred thousand heroes of 
the Republic, and made the civilized world 
stand aghast at the recital of their crimes. I 
do not say we should disfranchise the rebels 
because the President has allowed them to go 
unpunished, but that loyal men alone can be 
trusted to govern the country they have saved, 
and that the false clemency of the Executive 
is the exact reverse of a good reason for restor- 
ing traitors to power. Nor do I argue that 
perpetual disfranchisement will certainly be 
necessary, but that the nation, for its own safety, 
should withhold the ballot from its enemies till 
they have proved themselves fit to cast it. No 
such proof can be adduced. On the contrary, 
the spirit of treason is now quite as reeking and 
defiant in the revolted districts as at any time 
durin^^ the war. In the sunshine of the Presi- 
dent it has sprouted up into new and more 
vigorous forms of life, while repentant rebels 
are unknown, save in the sense of regretting 
the faikire of their treason. Sir, I hope the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress will not sully its good 
name by confounding the friends of the country 
with its enemies in the reconstruction and gov- 
ernment of the districts blighted by treason, 



and thug trample down the great principle that 
allegiance to the nation is the condition of 
citizenship and the bulwark of our freedom. 
To do this would be to surrender our strongest 
weapons to the President and his rebel allies. 
It would be disloyalty to the great cause which 
would thus again be imperiled, and bring dis- 
honor upon the graves of our martyred legions, 
who perished in deadly encounter with the trai- 
tors whom we now propose to restore to their 
lost rights. 

Mr. Speaker, I further object to the measure 
before us, that it is a mere enabling act, look- 
ing to the early restoration of the rebellious 
districts to their former places in the Union, 
instead of a well-considered frame of govern- 
ment, contemplating such restoration at some 
indefinite future time, and designed to fit them 
to receive it. They are not ready for recon- 
struction as independent States on any terms 
or conditions which Congress might impose; 
and I believe the time has come for us to say 
so. We owe this much to their misguided peo- 
ple, whose false and feverish hopes have been 
kept alive by the course of the Executive and 
the hesitating policy of Congress. I think I 
am safe in saying that if these districts were 
to-day admitted as States, with the precise 
political and social elements which we know 
to exist in them, even with their rebel popula- 
tion disfranchised and the ballot placed in the 
hands of radical Union men only, irrespective 
of color, the experiment would be ruinous to 
the best interests of their loyal people and 
calamitous to the nation. The withdrawal of 
Federal intervention and the unchecked opera- 
tion of local supremacy would as fatally hedge 
up the way of justice and equality as the rebel 
ascendency which now prevails. Why? Sim- 
ply because no theory of government, no forms 
of administration, can be trusted, unless ade- 
quately supported by public opinion. The 
power of the great landed aristocracy in these 
regions, if unrestrained by power from with- 
out, would inevitably assert itself Its political 
chemistry, obeying its own laws, would very 
soon crystalize itself into the same forms of 
treason and lawlessness which to-day hold 
their undisturbed empire over the existing 
loyal element. What these regions need, above 
all things, is not an easy and quick return to 
their forfeited rights in the Union, but govern- 
ment, the strong arm of power, outstretched 
from the central authority here in Washing- 
ton, making it safe for the freedmen of the 
South, safe for her loyal white men, safe for 
emigrants from the Old World and from the 
northern States to go and dwell there ; safe for 
northern capital and labor, northern energy 
and enterprise, and northern ideas to set up 
their habitation in peace, and thus found a 
Christian civilization and a living democracy 
amid the ruins of the past. That, sir, is what 
the country demands and the rebel power 
needs. To talk about suddenly building up 
independent States where the material for such 
structures is fatally wanting is nonsense. States 



must groto, and to that end their growth must 
be fostered and protected. The political and 
social regeneration of the country made deso- 
late by treason is the prime necessity of the 
hour, and is preliminary to any reconstruction 
of States. Years of careful pupilage under the 
authority of the nation may be found neces- 
sary, and Congress alone must d»ecide when 
and upon what conditions the tie rudely broken 
by treason shall be restored. Congress, more- 
over, is as solemnly bound to deny to disloyal 
communities admission into our great sister- 
hood of States as it is to deny the rights of 
citizenship to those who have forfeited such 
rights by treason. 

I have thus far, Mr. Speaker, addressed 
myself to considerations which appeal to men 
of my own political faith. There is a theory 
of reconstruction held by gentlemen on the 
other side of the House, according to which 
the rebels, the moment they laid down their 
arms and confessed themselves vanquished, 
were entitled to resume all their rights as citi- 
zens, just as if they had had not rebelled, and 
to set in motion the machinery of their State 
governments, be represented in Congress, and 
enjoy all and singular the rights and privileges 
of other citizens of the United States. Sir, I 
shall not consume much time in noticing this 
strange theory, which was so happily disposed 
of by the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Shella- 
barger] on Friday last. I must, however, do 
its friends the honor of confessing it to be en- 
tirely original. I think no such principle can 
be found in the law of nations. I am quite 
sure there is no historical precedent for it, and 
that the precedents are strongly the other way. 
One of these, and a very notable one, I may 
refer to, as illustrating the difference between 
the congressional and presidential theories of 
reconstruction. I understand that when Satan 
rebelled against the Almighty he was accom- 
modated with quarters somewhat more tropical 
and less salubrious than the kingdom he had 
involuntarily abdicated. To speak plainly, he 
was plunged into hell; and he "accepted the 
situation." According to one account of the 
transaction he said it was — 

" Better to reign in hell than servo in heaven ;" 

and he has not been "reconstructed" to this 
day. But according to the modern theory to 
which I refer, the devil, when he was finally 
overpowered and ^yas willing to acknowledge 
it, v/as that moment entitled to be reinstated 
in his ancient rights in Paradise, exactly as if 
he had not sinned. That I understand to be 
the Democratic theory of reconstruction. But 
Satan, devil as he was, never had the infernal 
audacity to insinuate so monstrous a preten- 
sion ; and it was reserved for the followers of 
Andrew Johnson, nearly six thousand years 
later, to startle the civilized world by its avowal. 
Mr. Speaker, let me not be misunderstood here. 
I do not desire to see the rebels follow in the 
footsteps of their illustrious predecessor. There 
may have been times when it seemed to me 



6 



they deserved a similar treatment. It may even 
have occurred to me, in some of my profaner 
moments^ that if there is not a pretty respect- 
able orthodox hell on the otlier side of the 
grave for the special discipline of the rebel 
leaders, it would seem to be the grandest over- 
sight that divine Providence could possibly 
have committed. But in confronting the dan- 
gers which now beset our country, I put aside 
these theological fancies ; and what I demand, 
and all I ask, is that Congress shall organize 
a well-'appointed political purgatory, located 
in the rebellious districts, and keep the rebels 
in it until by their penitence and a change of 
their lives they shall satisfy us that they can 
again be trusted with power. Let us put them 
on probation ; and should it require ten years, 
or twenty years, to qualify them for restoration, 
or secure an outside element strong enough to 
rule the rebel faction, let the time be extended. 
The grand interests involved plead with us to 
"make haste slowly," while voices from the 
graves of our slaughtered countrymen beseech 
us to "keep none but loyal men on guard." 
When the rebels, conscious of the ruin they 
have wrought, shall wash away their guilt in 
their tears of genuine contrition, then, and not 
till then, let us restore them to our embrace. 
And now, Mr. Speaker, if any gentleman 
asks me what plan of government I would in- 
stitute for the probation and pupilage of these 
districts I am ready to answer him. But be- 
fore I do that I desire to say what forms of re- 
construction I do not favor. In the first place, 
I oppose 'Any cunningly devised scheme like 
that reported by the gentleman from Ohio 
[Mr. Ashley] from the Committee on Terri- 
tories, with its popular conventions, its com- 
mittees of safety, its provisional governors, and 
other machinery designed to meet the ugly fact 
that we have a bad man in the presidential 
chair, whose usurpations it is pretended we 
must checkmate by these extraordinary meas- 
ures. If the President has been guilty of high 
crimes and misdemeanors, let him be impeached 
and hurled from power. I believe he is thus 
guilty, and therefore I believe our first duty is 
to call him to account. Instead of gradual 
approaches and Hank movements we should 
confront him at once with our accusations and 
demand his trial. Instead of lopping off the 
branches we should strike at the root of our 
troubles, and no significance or insignificance 
of the executive office as now filled should 
stand in the way of our constitutional duty. If 
the President is not guilty of high crimes and 
misdemeanors, in the sense in which those 
terms were understood by our forefathers, and 
according to the precedents they had before 
them, then the right of impeachment is not 
even a " scarecrow," as Mr. JefiTerson styled 
it. But if I am mistaken, and the country is 
doomed yet longer to endure his maladminis- 
tration, then let us adopt precisely such meas- 
ures of government for the rebellious districts 
as would be necessary and proper if we had an 
honest man in the place of Andrew Johnson, 



thus affording him the opportunity, should he 
seek it, to provoke new conflicts with the people 
by opposing our measures. Should his mad- 
ness fail to supply us, abundantly, with the 
grounds for a successful impeaclament, the 
sands of his official life will soon run out at 
the worst, while the management of the rebel 
territory demands a policy which may last for 
indefinite years. As the friends of the Consti- 
tution and the champions of law, we can best 
perform our duty by adhering to the well-set- 
tled forms and usages of our republican insti- 
tutions. 

I oppose, in the second place, any plan of 
reconstruction which attempts to reconcile 
opposite and utterly irreconcilable theories. 
If the rebellious districts are States, known 
to the Constitution as such, they have the 
right to be represented on this floor and in the 
other end of the Capitol. They have all the 
rights of the other independent States of the 
Union, and the work of reconstruction is done 
already. The logic of this theory, if accepted, 
not only vindicates the policy of the President, 
but brands the legislation of Congress for 
nearly six years past as a deliberate usurpa- 
tion. This is the rebel theory, and those who 
have accepted it with all its consequences are 
consistent and brave men, who are entitled to 
the thanks of all the enemies of their country. 
But if you reject this theoi-y, then you are 
driven squarely over to the policy of unquali- 
fied radicalism, for there is no middle ground 
on which to stand. If these districts are not 
States known to the Constitution it must 
follow inevitably that the Constitution knows 
them only as Territories, for which Congress 
is bound by the express words of the Consti- 
tution to " make all needful rules and regula- 
tions." Sir, I am opposed to any scheme of 
compromise between these theories, and to any 
plan of reconstruction which embodies in it 
any elements of the rebel theory. The policy 
of Congress and the President in recognizing 
those districts as States, while exercising over 
them powers utterly inconsistent with the 
rights of States, has brought upon ns our 
worst troubles, and the sooner we abandon 
it the better it will be for the country. The 
nation needs a manly and straightforward 
■policy, and not the weakness and vacillation 
which spring from crooked and ambidextrous 
measures which lend strength to the enemies 
of the Republic. 

Mr. Speaker, the theory which deals with 
the rebellious districts as under the exclusive 
jurisdiction of Congress rests upon grounds 
which are logically impregnable. In the first 
place, their old constitutional governments were 
overthrown and destroyed by the rebellion. 
This will not be disputed. Second, their rebel 
governments, which followed, were destroyed 
by our arms. This is equally certain. Third, 
their present governments, extemporized by 
the President, are military and provisional only, 
having no validity whatever save that which 
they borrow from the continued acquiescence 



\ 



of Congress. The President himself can be 
quoted in support of this position. And fourth, 
the rebels themselves, having forfeited all their 
rights by their treason, as I have already 
shown, have no authority to institute any sort 
of government within their respective districts, 
until they are expressly empowered so to do by 
CoEgress. If I am right in these positions, 
these districts are so many geographical divis- 
ions of the Republic whose people are wholly 
without any valid civil government, and with- 
out any constitutional power to frame such 
government; and being solelyunder the juris- 
diction of Congress, and having none of the 
powers and attributes of States, they are neces- 
sarily Territories of the United States. As 
such they need government till they are pre- 
pared for readmission, and the machinery of 
territorial governments, older than the Consti- 
tution itself, is as familiar to the American peo- 
ple as that of the State governments. Let each 
of these Territories then have a governor, a 
chiefjustice, a marshal, and an attorney. Let 
eacL of them have a Delegate in Congress, fitly 
denied the right to vote, while permitted to 
speak. Let each have a Legislature for the 
enactment of local laws, subject to the super- 
vision of Congress. Let Congress declare who 
shall be qualified to vote in these Territories, 
adopting the same rule already established in 
the other Territories of the United States and 
in the District of Columbia. And when local 
supremacy shall defy the national authority in 
any of these Territories, let it be effectually 
cured by the military power of the United 
States. Under this educational process I would 
have these rebellious districts trained up in the 
way they should go, whether the time required 
for such training shall prove long or short ; 
while in the mean time every inch of their soil 
will be subject to the national authority, and 
freely open to the energy and enterprise of the 
world. This policy, by nationalizing the South, 
would render life and property as secure in 
Louisiana as in Maine. It would tend power- 
fully to make our whole country homogeneous. 
It would encourage in these wasted regions 
''small farms, thrifty tillage, free schools, 
closely-associated communities, social inde- 
pendence, respect for honest labor, and equal- 
ity of political rights. ' ' All these blessings must 
follow, if only the nation, having vanquished 
its enemies, will now resolutely assert its power 
in the interest of loyal men, over regions in 
which nothing but power is respected. 

To all this, Mr. Speaker, it will be objected 
that it contravenes tlie policy of the constitu- 
tional amendment proposed by Congress at our 
last session, and therefore cannot in good faith 
be urged while that amendment is pending. 
Several replies to this objection are at hand. 
First, it must be remembered that this amend- 
ment was submitted to the several States. 
Congress had no right to propose it to unor- 
ganized districts which had no constitutional 
governments of any sort, and therefore 'no 
power to pass spon the question. Could we, 



for example, submit this amendment to Colo- 
rado or Nebraska, bo'fore they have been law- 
fully declared States? Congress, at the last 
session, might have waived all formalities and 
recognized the rebellious districts as States by 
receiving their representatives, as was done in 
the case of Tennessee ; but .we refused to do 
this. Congress even declined to pass the bill 
reported trom the Reconstruction Committee 
providing that these so-called States should be 
received ontheir acceptance of the amendment. 
It is perfectly certain, therefore, that Congress 
reserved for its future judgment the very ques- 
tion which is assumed to have been decided by 
the objection under notice ; or, that if Con- 
gress did decide it the decision was the other 
way. The very utmost that can be claimed by 
the champions of the constitutional amend- 
ment is that the question is an open one ; and, 
being an open question, Congress may decide 
it to-day by putting territorial governments over 
these regions, leaving the amendment to the 
disposition of the loyal States, whose repre- 
sentatives in Congress for nearly six years past 
have ignored the existence of disloyal States 
in dealing with the mighty concerns of war and 
peace and the amendment of the Constitution 
itself. I believe the pending amendment will 
be ratified ; but in voting to submit it I do not 
think Congress is at all embarrassed in its pres- 
ent action. I can say, for myself at least, that 
I am perfectly untrammeled, either by my 
votes in this House or by pledges or commit- 
tals anywhere ; while I believe the general 
understanding at the last session was that the 
amendment embodied provisions which were 
demanded as national safeguards, without pre- 
tending to supply any final solution of the 
problem of reconstruction. 

But I reply, in the next place, that even if 
Congress at the last session bound itself by an 
implied agreement to admit these districts as 
States on their ratification of the amendment, 
we are now released from that obligation. 
With singular unanimity and emphasis they 
have rejected our proposal, and thereby left us 
free. Sir, are we bound to wait here five years, 
or ten years, for them to ponder the question 
and reverse their decision, after they have 
already defiantly spurned our offer, allowing 
the rebel'power in the meanwhile to have free 
course? I do not so understand the bargain, 
if any bargain has been made. We have the 
right to plead our release, and the state of the 
country demands that we shall exercise it. 
Since our session of last summer great changes 
have been wrought in the general feeling of the 
people. We see daily the truth of the old 
adage that "circumstances alter cases."' Pub- 
lic opinion has forced Congress to establish 
manhood suffrage in the District of Columbia, 
and thereby to say that that principle should 
prevail in all the States of the Union. Con- 
gress has extended it over all the Territories 
of the United States, constituting an empire 
large enough to support a population of two 
hundred million people. Congress has voted 



8 



for the admission of Colorado and Nebraska 
on the fundamental condition of their accept- 
ance of the same principle, and thus adver- 
tised all whom it may concern that other States 
yet to be born must comply with the same 
condition. Most certainly the like require- 
ment will be made of the districts lately in 
arms against us, whatever may betide the con- 
stitutional amendment. God forbid that we 
should impose conditions upon virgin States 
of the Northwest, which have never rebelled, 
and whose people to-day are loyal, which we 
will not exact of the rebels who have drenched 
their country in blood 1 Sir, we cannot trifle 
with a principle so vital, or expose it to any 
sort of hazard. I voted last year against 
restoring Tennessee to her place, in the Union, 
because I feared she could not be trusted 
without a mortgage from her securing the ballot 
to her colored loyalists. I hope my fears will 
prove groundless, but I shall never regret my 
vote. The loyal people of Maryland to-day, 
black and white, would be safer under Federal 
bayonets than under their local government ; 
and Congress, where it has the power, must 
exert it against the enemies of the country and 
their sympathizers. I shall never vote to re- 
store one of these rebel districts to power as a 
State, except upon the condition that impartial 
suffrage, without respect to race, color, or for- 
mer condition of slavery, shall be the supreme 
law within her borders. Sir, we can no longer 
evade the solemn duty which the logic of 
events has at last made plain to all lovers of 
justice ; and the man who now thrusts consti- 
tutional amendments in our way might as well 
quote the Crittenden resolutions, adopted by 
this House the day following the first battle cf 
Bull Run, as the governing principle of the 
Thirty-Ninth Congress. 

I add. finally, and as a conclusion from what 
I have said already, that the second section of 
the proposed amendment ought never to be 
made a part of the Constitution of the United 
States. It would not now be proposed, if the 
question were pending as a new one, as our 
action at this session has plainly indicated. I 
voted for it, along with the other sections of 
the amendment, simply as a proposal to reduce 
the political power of the rebels to a common 
level with that of loyal men; but instead of 
cutting down representation in these districts 
to the basis of actual suflVage, I think we are 
now ready so to extend the franchise as to 
make it commensurate with actual represent- 
ation. An amendment of the Constitution 
securing this result should have been proposed 
at the last session. When, in our extremity, 
we called on the black loyalists of the South 



to help us through the red sea of war into 
which our wickedness had plunged us, and 
they responded to our call by sending two hun- 
dred thousand soldiers to our rescue, it thence- 
forward became the nation's duty, from which 
no escape was morally possible, to secure the 
rights of citizenship, both civil and political, 
to the wronged and outraged millions of the 
African race in our midst. It thenceforward 
ought to have been counted a shameful prop- 
osition, a flagrant affront to common justice 
and gratitude, for Congress to propose to the 
rebels, as a constitutional amendment, that if 
they would agree to the exclusion of these 
loyal colored men from the basis of represent- 
ation, we would agree to surrender them to 
the tender mercies of rebel State governments, 
which might wholly deprive them of the sacred 
right of representation. Sir, I hope no such 
principle will ever defile the Constitutiori of 
our fathers. Aside from its cold-blooded in- 
gratitude to our black allies, it is radically 
vicious. It impliedly concedes to the States 
of the Union the right to disfranchise male 
citizens of the United States over twenty-one 
years old who are innocent of crime, and thus 
strikes at the root of all democracy. If "tax- 
ation without representation is tyranny," and 
Governments derive "their just powers from 
the consent of the governed," the citizen's 
right of representation is as natural and in- 
herent as the breath of his nostrils. To deprive 
him of it, unless he himself forfeits it by his 
ofiFenses against society, is a crime against his 
manhood, which is the common foundation of 
tlie rights of all men. It is an offense against 
all free government, for the right of one citizen 
to a voice in its public administration is pre- 
cisely the same as the right of every other 
citizen ; and no fraction of citizens, however 
large, can deprive the remainder of their com- 
mon and equal right. To deny this is to mock 
the Declaration of Independence and insult 
the memory of our fathers; and to incorporate 
the denial into the Constitution of the United 
States, in words which express or imply it, 
would strengthen the hands of every rebel in 
the South, and comfort the enemies of Amer- 
ican democracy throughout the world. It 
would pollute the very fountains of our na- 
tional life by the unnatural marriage of the 
Constitution to the foul heresy of State rights, 
which so recently wrapped the Republic in the 
flames of war; while it would stand in open 
conflict with that grand central principle of 
our great Charter which declares that "the 
United States shall guaranty to every State 
in this Union a republican form of govern- 
ment." 



